Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak was at the Chinese Cultural Centre in Scarborough for a town hall meeting on May 20, 2014 and was joined by federal Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, a former colleague in the Mike Harris government. (Jack Boland/QMI Agency)

Cecilia Nasmith, QMI Agency

COBOURG, Ont. — High energy costs are crippling Ontario manufacturing plants, which then forces them to come crawling to the government for handouts, Tim Hudak said Wednesday.

The Ontario PC leader was at a plastics company in Cobourg, where the 200-person workforce is half of what it was only a few years ago. Much of that has been due to high energy costs, Hudak said.

"That machine doesn't run on air," he said, referring to a plastics injection machine behind him.

"If your taxes were going through the roof and your energy bills were skyrocketing, I don't blame any business leader for trying to get that money back.

But that's politics of the past, he said.

"I'm not going to give you a grant, but I'm not going to give your competitor a grant down the road, either," Hudak said.

"I will lower taxes, for all employers to put more people on the payroll.”

Local Liberal candidate Lou Rinaldi hoped Hudak also saw some of the benefits the plastics company has enjoyed from the Liberal government's new-technology funding, including its new solar project, which has started bringing ints energy costs down.

"That is exactly what he wants to cut, exactly the same thing he wants to do away with," Rinaldi said.